


Gravity Pulls vol. 2

by haade_s



Series: The Adventures of Margo and Bucky [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, lots of mentions about death as well, not gonna lie chef... there's a fair amount of blood, russian mafia is in there bc why not, she's also partially a paraplegic and that's described
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24735007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haade_s/pseuds/haade_s
Summary: “You wanna arrest the Sarge? Fine.” Margo saw Natasha’s eyebrows raise slightly, not in a disapproving way but in a way that said she didn’t really know what she was going to do next.“Well shit.” Bucky mumbled, preparing himself again for a fight, making everyone else on his team tense as well.“But I get first dibs of the talking, flying microwave.”Margo will admit later that, perhaps, shooting Vision with a bolt of lightning wasn’t very nice.
Relationships: Bucky Barnes & OFC, Bucky Barnes/OFC, James Barnes & OFC, James Barnes/OFC, James Buchanan Barnes & OFC, James Buchanan Barnes/OFC, non-romantic - Relationship
Series: The Adventures of Margo and Bucky [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658743
Kudos: 4





	Gravity Pulls vol. 2

_18th of November 2014_  
_7 months after The Fall of Shield and The Reveal of Hydra_

“To lose your mind is a terrible thing.”

Margo sat alone in a forest that she couldn’t quite remember the name of at that moment, her legs wet from the dew of the grass, the fog surrounding her like it did in her mind. Her bones ached and creaked when she would sway every now and again and her gaze was as dead as she had been a few days ago.

So many things had gone so terribly wrong in the last three and a half months and she wished that she could turn back time.

They received a message saying her brother was MIA and that they should prepare for the worst. But how could you prepare for the funeral of your own brother when his body hasn’t even been found yet?

Margo had to drop out of school, her grades were slipping enough as it was while she was working one job without her parents knowing but after hearing about her brother, she dropped out and got another job to bury herself in. Her parents ended up getting fired from their jobs, her mom going as far as moving out of the house because she couldn’t handle the pressure. Margo and her dad moved out of the suburbs and into the city, her dad hoping to find a job quickly so that she didn’t have to pay for rent by herself.

When Margo lost one of her jobs and the rent started to pile up, she had to resort going into the fighting pits underground, where people like her and people completely different to her could make quick money if they survived the night. When she came home bloody and beaten with enough money to pay the rent, her father told her the truth about their old jobs and secret life.

Shield agents.

Both of them, before Brad, was born and every now and again to keep Fury happy with added benefits.

It all made sense, of course, the number of business trips to DC, the cabin that Aunt Peggy gave them, and the fact that nearly everyone in the Howlies families are in some way involved with Shield.

But that didn’t matter now, because her dad was dead. Murdered by some Hydra agents he had accidentally pissed off in DC before the fall. And they took her with him.

Her friends had been a few blocks away, one of them an Inhuman like her with the ability to, to put it simply, control and manipulate waves. Which meant she learnt how to listen in and communicate with brain waves after lots of attempts and lots of nose bleeds. She was able to stay in contact with Margo’s mind and at least give her comfort while she was murdered.

However, something none of them could have seen coming, was that when Margo died, her friend’s mind stayed connected out of sheer force of will and kept Margo’s brain physically alive by keeping the brain waves travelling. They stuck close, waiting for the police to do what they needed to do and when Margo was taken away to the morgue, they contacted a friend that worked there to let them in to see if they could possibly bring her back to life.

Now, Arian was the one keeping her brain alive, so all that they needed to do (in theory) was heal her body and give her a shock to start her heart. Ora did the healing, Sparky (or Melissa, depends on how good of friends you were) absorbed some energy to transfer to Ora so she didn’t kill herself in the process of bringing Margo back to life, and then shocked her heart so it was beating again.

It was… violent… to say the least.

Although, sitting in the waiting room of hell for the first time wasn’t all that bad.

However, a few months before, a little bit after when all of this mess started, and after Trips death, Margo had been there to help out Coulson and his team with Lady Sif. She also had to help defend a newly turned Skye against a Kree, and Sif and she ended up proving herself to both that they didn’t need to kill her with offering her life in exchange for Skye’s. Saying if they were going to kill any Inhuman then they were better off killing her instead of Skye because she had so much room for learning how to harness her powers for good and to help people around her. Margo had gotten hers too soon and almost felt rotten inside from how messed up they felt.

Sif had pulled her aside and apologised profusely for her violent behaviour and as soon as she got back to Asgard, she would educate her people as best as she could about the Inhumans of this age. She also told Margo of a forest in Norway, deep in the woods, many hundreds of years ago, she hid a powerful weapon in a chest with gauntlets and a shield. She said that they had been made from the same dying star that Thor’s hammer had been made in, long before she was born, and the weapons would only respond to a worthy warrior. Sif didn’t know if Margo would be that warrior but if she was anything like the selfless and protective girl she was today, then Margo should surely be able to wield the weapons.

The way her new society of people worked was whatever city she was in, had a certain number of leaders that oversee the people within their society. So Inhumans, Enhanced, and Gifted people were all part of it, especially since Shield found the Sanctuary run by Jiaying and it was destroyed leading to a hell of a lot of Inhumans in need of somewhere to hide. A lot of “illegal” immigrants and homeless people were part of the Housing Program, so they could start to make a life of their own without having to worry if their children would be taken off them or having to worry about rent issues.

The homeless kids or orphans were put into a program that rotated them to different people in the city, giving them an education in place of a public school. Once a month, all the kids head underground to be taken in by the people there for a mini, one-week holiday so that the caregivers could also get a break and re-charge.

When she got back to New York, it wasn’t even a full week before her superiors sent her to Chicago to talk peace with the leaders of that cities sector. As opposed to the New York City sector, that only had three leaders for the whole city, the Chicago sector had gained a total of thirteen leaders. It was getting hard to communicate with the city and some of them only rose to those ranks via violence and force.

It was there that she met Dimitri Wolsky, a hired gun that preferred assassin because it has two times the ass.

Now, on the other hand, after dying a second time, she sat in the forest clearing. Listening to all the animals waking up, she dug her hands into the soil. Navigating around some old roots from the trees until she came across something metallic. Using her powers, she altered the gravitational pull of the handle she had in her hand on so that instead of it pushing against the earth, it went in the opposite direction and she pulled.

It sprung from the giant hole, letting go of the pull she made, the chest landed upright on the wet grass. She could see runes were carved into every inch of it once she got the caked mud and dirt off it. She turned it, finding a large lock keeping it shut from her before taking a hold of it and yanking the old thing off. The hinges creaked from not being used in so long and the dirt from the top fell like a waterfall behind it.

Her face was impassive, looking into the chest, she saw objects wrapped in cloth and she took a hold of the smallest but sturdiest looking one. She unwrapped it, the cloth breaking every now and again from how old it was, and it revealed the handle of a sword but no blade. It was long enough that you’d be able to use both hands while fighting and Margo suddenly remembered that it looked nearly exactly the same as the sword Sif used now, only a dark purple in place of dark red.

She wrapped it in the cloth again, doing her best to not break it more than it already had, and she closed the chest again. Margo stood, her knees cracking and her back aching at the sudden movement and she took the handle of the chest in her hand again, dragging it through the grass on her way back to the cabin of her friend she was staying with.

_5th of May 2016_  
_Peggy Carter’s Funeral_

“I’m here for you. You get that, right?” Dimitri was dressed in a black suit with a deep red tie matching the deep red belt she had around her waist.

Margo and Dimitri had become quick friends, meeting in Chicago before coincidentally meeting up in different parts of the world. He had the unfortunate privilege of watching her die in his arms and then be brought back again while they were both staying in Russia. Only this time, she hadn’t fought back due to knowing the poor boy that did it, and her spinal cord had been damaged. When everything had been healed, and she was alive, she had suffered nerve damage from the knee down on her right leg.

She was lucky, however, that her people had made vague contact with a completely different secret society of people with genuine magic. And so, she found herself in what they called the New York Institute. They helped her harness the magic inside her to walk again while teaching her some of the basics of protection. The Ancient One, who was a bald woman that gave Margo bad vibes, got involved with her training for a little bit before deeming her done with them altogether. That they’ve done all they need to do.

Wong, the man that was teaching her originally, argued against it, wanting to teach her more but The Ancient One refused. Instead, Margo catches up for tea whenever they are both in New York. He teaches her small things, things they can just talk about without needing an entire training area. It was after her training there that she left for the forest in Norway to gain her physical and mental health back.

Cassandra had met Dimitri, admitting that he had a great charm about him before she disappeared again without a trace. Her mother did that a lot nowadays, she had her own shit to sort out and at the moment, working in a huge interconnected community wasn’t exactly her thing. She would check in with her own mother, Loredana Di Cola, in Italy every now and again but that was all Margo heard of her.

Due to everything that happened between Shield and Jiaying, with the Terrigen crystals ending up being exposed to the ocean's ecosystem, Dimitri also ended up being exposed and Margo helped him through his transition with her aunts. He now has the ability to control air and she called him twinkle toes for three weeks straight.

“Thank you.” Margo turned from the window looking onto London, fixing his tie. “For getting all dressed up and agreeing to meet my family.”

“Hey, I got to at some point, right.” He smiled down at her and rubbed her covered upper arms in comfort. “Let’s head out.”

“Compromise when you can. Where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move. It is your duty, to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye and say, “No... you move.””

“You took that way too seriously as a kid, didn’t you?” Dimitri leaned down to whisper the words.

“Damn right.” Was all she said, making him smile.

When the food was being served, the time came to introduce Dimitri to the family members that were able to make it out of hiding since The Fall. All hell broke loose when news of both Margo and her dad being murdered that hardly any of them knew that she was actually still alive until now. There was a lot of tears from both her blood-related cousins and the Howlies cousins. When they all formed a circle, all the people around her age group, they couldn’t wait to interrogate the new meat that was Dimitri.

So, she left him to suffer in favour of re-filling her plate at the buffet, where she roughly bumped into someone, narrowly missing spilling her plate of food by slightly using her powers. When she looked who it was to apologise, she was beaten to it by Steve Rogers himself. This wasn’t technically the first time they’ve met, the flower shop one of her grandmothers had owned was destroyed in the Chitari attack, and Steve had come looking for it, helping clean up a little bit of it while telling her that he used to come to the very shop to buy flowers for his mother’s grave.

“You’re Margo!” He exclaimed after apologising, which surprised her. “Your grandma owned that flower shop, God! How have you been, kid?”

They both put down their full plates of food to quickly hug, making Margo laugh for a second.

“You remember that?” They pulled back and she made a face of recognition. “Right, I forgot. I did a research paper on your serum when I was a kid. Your memory is damn near hallucinative.”

“Yeah, it feels like that sometimes.” He nodded with a bit of an awkward smile and Margo realised that he probably hated talking about the serum.

“Sorry. I get ahead of myself sometimes. How have you been?” She changed the subject quickly which she could tell he appreciated. “I know according to the media you’ve been kicking ass and taking names, but no one talks about how you’re supposed to have a support system for all that shit.”

Steve was taken aback at just how much she got it. Everyone always wants to hear about the war stories and how you trash talk the bad guys but hardly anyone wants to know about all the times in between where you have to deal with the mass death that’s been put on your hands. The guilt that the government thinks none of them have.

However, he wasn’t able to tell her due to Sharon seemingly coming out of nowhere and hitting Margo lightly on the shoulder, surprising them both especially when Natasha came to stand beside her. Apparently, she decided to stick around for a bit longer to give Sharon her condolences.

“Watch your language, young lady! We’re in a church.” Sharon sent Steve a smile which he returned.

“Yeah, and name one funeral where that stopped Aunt Peggy.” Margo rubbed where Sharon hit her, trying to make her feel a little bit bad for doing it.

“Wait, say that again.” Steve said with a smile, trying to hold back a laugh.

“At Howard Stark’s funeral, she got on a tabletop and sang “Don’t You Forget About Me” into a microphone to cheer up Tony Stark.” Margo took a cautious step towards him in case Sharon decided to take another swing at her. “So, I hear, anyway.”

“Margo!” Both Natasha and Steve were laughing quietly, trying not to cause a scene.

“I’ve seen the tapes, bitch!” Margo replied playfully. “You can’t stop the truth.”

They calmed down after a moment and Sam Wilson decided to walk up with a drink in his hand, eyeing Margo suspiciously when he saw Steve laughing.

“What did you say to the old man, Miss Navarre?” He took a sip of his drink and watched her.

“Only the truth.”

“Margo, don’t you dare-” Sharon tried to take a hold of her arm, but Natasha pulled her back with a laugh.

“Aunt Peggy danced on a tabletop at Howard Stark’s funeral.” 

Sam spat into his drink before covering his mouth so that his laughter wouldn’t be loud, and Natasha had to turn her back while her shoulders shook.

“Okay, okay, hold on.” Steve held his hands up with a wide smile before pointing at a smug Margo. “You’re related to Peggy?”

“Not by blood. My great Grandpa was Frenchie.” She explained. “The Howlies families all just kinda stuck together. I will personally /not\ invite you to the family gatherings mainly because Aunt Marge is an old stickybeak and Aunt Doras is even worse especially since she got new hearing aids.”

She then cupped her mouth and coughed loudly, making a little old lady jump in her seat not far from Steve but far enough that not even he would be able to hear in on a conversation. Margo gave her a look before Doras took her walking stick and walked to where her family was on the other side of the table. Steve smiled at Margo, a warm feeling in his chest at the new information about the Howlies families.

“Oh, and he told me to say this.” Margo then recounted the very first thing that her great grandpa ever taught her in French.

To anyone, it would be an eyebrow-raiser, a bunch of insults thrown in with something a little personal for Steve’s sake.

“That bastard,” Steve mumbled with a shit-eating grin.

“He knew you were coming back.” He looked up at Margo, feeling himself relax at her wide smile. “I don’t know how, but he just knew.”

“On a more serious note,” Sam announced, raising his free hand before laying it on Margo’s shoulder. “How have you been? I haven’t seen you in a while. Your brother I’ve seen but not you.” 

“Wait, they found your brother?” Natasha asked, stepping forward a little in curiosity.

“ _We_ found her brother actually.” Dimitri decided to enter himself into the conversation at this point and Margo’s eyes widened at what he was saying, looking at the adults in front of her before turning to Dimitri in hopes that he would shut up.

“You two found him?” Natasha asked, pointing to them both.

“Yeah, we tracked their signal out in the desert and brought him back to the states.” He didn’t notice the look she was giving him until it was too late. “And that’s the look you give people right before they die. I’ll shut up.”

“Excuse me?” Sam butted in, concerned at what that meant.

“You rescued your brother from terrorists and let the government take the credit?” It felt like Natasha was interrogating her again.

“Legally, no.” Margo answered stiffly, eyes shifting from Sam to Natasha, to Steve then back to Natasha again.

“Then what’s the illegal answer?” Steve asked before turning to Natasha in question. “How do you two know each other?”

“We met in Russia.” She answered with a shrug.

“You went to Russia?” Sharon asked, sounding like her mother.

Margo just stood there, intently staring at nothing now and hoping that someone would pull the fire alarm, so she could hide in hole in the fetal position. It stopped when she turned on her heels and walked away, she ignored the adults calling out for her except when Sam called out something he said to her last time they saw each other in DC.

“You can’t keep running away from your problems, Margo. You can’t keep punching them either!”

“Eyes closed, head first! Can’t go wrong!” She yelled from over her shoulder before leaving the church.

✦✦✦

“You don’t like it, do you?” Ora’s niece eyed Margo and Dimitri carefully, trying to see their true reaction to the hotel.

Ora, while she didn’t look it, was in her sixties, making her niece in her late twenties. Because Ora had the ability to heal herself, and others, she’s able to stay looking young so long as she has the energy.

“It looks amazing.” Margo reassured, looking around at the penthouse.

“Then what’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing!” Margo held her hands up in defence. “I’m just not used to seeing something so… not lowkey. Which I really shouldn’t be talking, given my Resort project in Australia and Russia.”

“And given your affiliation with Shield and Coulson.” Mala Bakshi, England’s current Leader, was leaning against a wall not far from them.

“Okay, an actual big blue bastard Kree was going to attack one of our own.” Margo defended, pointing at Mala as she walked towards them. “And if I hadn’t got involved then Asgard wouldn’t have been educated.”

“Always the noble one.” Mala shook her head before stepping forward again to give Margo a hug. “Whenever you visit, it’s usually to help talk peace. There is no fighting, so I wonder what you are here for.”

Margo scratched her head, Mala was the last World Leader of her society she needed to talk to about her new proposal. And she knew that Mala could go either way with her opinion.

“You’re right.” She heard Dimitri talking the small tablet from his jacket and she turned to take it from him when he offered. “I’m here to talk about war.”

“War?” Mala’s head tilted to the side. “I didn’t know Jordan got so out of hand.”

“Oh, believe me, if that were the case then it would be sorted in two minutes.” They both laughed for a second before going serious again, handing her the tablet. “No. This is just me pre-planning a plan, of an idea. It’s got about every different scenario that my team could think of.”

“And what exactly is this planning for?” Mala was flicking through the blueprints with maps, reading some of the notes.

“For an army.” Mala looked at Margo again with a cautious expression. “The Outside has the Avengers, so should we. I’ve written down instructions for what to do with each situation, each plan, each location but I will be the first to admit that my knowledge is only limited. That’s why I’ve proposed this plan to every other world leader in hopes it will be brought up at the next World Council Meeting and a solid tactical plan can be worked off mine. Or a whole new plan.”

“That’s next week.” Mala said, locking the tablet and putting it under her arm. “And you’ve given this to all the other World Leaders?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Margo was standing with her back straight, hands behind her back and her chin up.

“And what of the existing Avengers?”

“I was hoping that with my personal connections to over half of them, I would be able to convince them to support our army if the time called for it.”

“Over half? Last time we spoke, you said six and even then, your connection to Scarlet Witch wasn’t on solid grounds at best.” The reminder of Margo and her team’s failure of rescuing Wanda and her brother from Hydra was still fresh on her memory and seeing what happened with the poor kid recently on the news furthered her guilt.

“Honestly...” Margo sighed, rubbing in between her eyebrows. “I’m pulling all the stops out with this. Time and time again we have been blindsided, be it aliens or a psychotic AI. We had zero game plan when the Chitari attacked, Sokovia still hasn’t got an existing council and it took Greek and Turkish healers to help out not only for the small pocket of our people but also to help out everyone else.”

Margo took a breath, “I’m doing everything I can to make sure this gets approved because yes, we hide ourselves away from the existing government for a reason but what’s the point if we can’t help everyone when the time comes?”

There was a silence, Margo could tell that Mala was thinking it over.

“Even if it meant saving Ross?” Mala poked with a sly smile.

“Mala, you know that if I was stuck in a locked room with Red Skull and Ross, with a gun with only two shots in it, I would shoot Ross twice before beating Red Skull to death and use his dead body as a battering ram to get myself out of the room.”

Mala chuckled at her deadpan but got the point none the less.

“I’ll bring this up in the council meeting next week. Thank you, for being honest.” She put her free hand on Margo’s shoulder with a nod. “In other things to discuss, I’d like to hire you.”

“Pardon?” Margo’s eyebrows raised.

“I’d like to take you under my wing, mentor you for a leadership position.”

“Mala, I couldn’t possibly-” Margo was cut off by the door to the penthouse being slammed open.

Ora and Arian power walked to them with near panicked expressions.

“You need to see the news.” Was all Ora said, grabbing the remote to the giant TV not far from them and turning it on to the news channel. “It’s the only thing playing across all news stations.” 

“More than 70 people have been injured. At least 12 are dead, including Wakanda's King T'Chaka. Officials have released a video of a suspect who they have identified as James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Soldier. The infamous HYDRA agent linked to numerous acts of terrorism and political assassinations.”

“That’s…” Margo was stunned. “That’s impossible. He’s been in Bucharest the entire goddamn time! He probably hasn’t even left his apartment at this time in the morning!”

“It’s a set-up, Margo,” Arian said, watching the TV screen with disgust. “Whoever wants him is framing him for this to flush him out of hiding.”

“Margo.” Mala got her to turn around to face her. “Bring him in. We can protect him and keep him safe. You know this. You’ve offered it to him before.”

“Jordan will never let you do that.” Ora argued.

“Sign off to work for me. I can keep you safe while keeping him safe as well. I’ll bring it up at the World Council Meeting if I have to.” She walked over to where there was a sheet of paper, a contract. “We can work out the details later, but Barnes needs you.”

She looked to Arian, waiting for her to tell her Mala only had Margo’s best interests at heart because right now, it was hard to concentrate on anything but Bucky. When she nodded, Margo quickly signed her name.

“I also have one for you Mr. Wolsky but we can discuss that later.” Mala turned and gave the contract to Ora’s niece. “Bring Barnes back here and then we will discuss transport. Call me if anything changes.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

✦✦✦

They were so close. So, so, so close. The power had already been shut down at the holding facility they took Bucky to by the time they arrived, and a helicopter tried to take off but was stopped by Steve. Margo and Dimitri were driving through the streets of Berlin, trying to find where Steve would’ve taken Bucky to be temporarily safe from prying eyes.

“Go down that street.” She pointed to where a closed mechanics was, and he parked outside.

“You think he’s in there?” He asked, eyeing the helicopter flying above them.

“He should be.” She answered, grabbing her backpack and readying herself before mumbling to herself. “Two years.”

“It’s okay to be nervous.” She looked at Dimitri with a playful expression.

“Yeah, it’s not like I’m trying to kidnap him or anything.”

Her knocks made a loud echo and she watched as Dimitri drove off to the safe house they discussed during the drive. She stood there for three minutes before opening the door and letting herself in, there were drag marks in the dust on the floor when she walked through to the middle and she got a bit angry when she saw some blood by a vice where the drag marks stopped. She walked back over to the front door only to see Anastasia Fedunov opening it and walking through to her.

Her dad was one of the top bosses in the Russian mafia and his numerous children, all from different women, were trained to do his bidding. For a few months after the first time she died, Margo felt rebellious and got herself in a tough spot with Anastasia’s family and one of Anastasia’s older brothers was sent out to kill her. Margo was able to fend for herself until her friends came with back up and beat the shit out of him so instead, they sent one of Anastasia’s younger brothers. They noticed that Margo had grown attached to him specifically and because he was so young, they thought it would be a perfect death.

Mikhail was still in the middle of his training, so when he made the first stab wound in her back, he accidentally hit her spinal cord.

When news of her “second resurrection” got around, they sent him on the run-in hopes that Margo wouldn’t find him and kill him. What they didn’t know was that Mikhail had taken her phone before killing her, calling Dimitri to come and save her before it was too late, in hopes that she wouldn’t be dead for too long this time. While Margo was with the sorcerers, Dimitri had tracked him down and brought him to America with one of his cousins that he was close with, putting him into the Housing Program so that they wouldn’t ever have to go back.

“You shouldn’t be here.” She crossed her arms over her chest with a stern look.

“I know.” Margo turned her head to look back at the dried blood. “It looks like they left hours ago now.”

“I meant in Europe.” She replied.

“I know that too.” Margo sighed, looking down at her feet. “Him… not being here is going to complicate things further.”

“How?”

“If he was in the wind then I’d be able to just take him back to London to Mala but he’s not and he’s probably going to get caught by Stark.”

“Well, I hate to make things worse, then.” She frowned then, almost apologetically. “Thaddeus Ross knows you’re here. He paid my father to let some of his own men into the country, off the books, and they aren’t military.”

“You recognised one of them?” Margo asked, not really surprised at the lengths Ross would go to in order to get to Margo.

“Yerik. The Swedish one.”

Margo only sighed again, nodding before walking out of the building with Anastasia following.

“I’m heading to a safe house, so you should probably skedaddle before your dad finds out about this.” Margo turned her head to see Anastasia nod before turning down a street.

“Stay safe!”

“You too!”

✦✦✦

 _“Unfortunately, due to some complications with the contract at the moment, you are classed as unemployed and you nor I have not authority over your people like Arian and Ora. However, due to Mr. Wolsky ** **not**** signing a contract with me, he can do whatever he wants and who am I to assume he will help you?”_ Mala said over the phone. _“This mess will be cleared up within hours, but I know Sargent Barnes doesn’t have hours at the moment, so you’ll have to do what you think is best. Even if that means getting in between him and some vibranium cat claws."_

“I appreciate everything that you’re doing, Mala, I really do. Thank you so much.” Margo replied, she was in the car park, just coming up to a van and an old beetle car that were parked next to each other, knowing they were used by Steve and his team. However, she could already hear them fighting. “ _Shit_. I have to go, I’ll call you later.”

She didn’t wait for a reply before hanging up and putting her phone back in her pocket, but before she could start running, she heard the engine of a motorbike coming towards her. Dimitri stopped the bike and threw a helmet to her while pulling his own visor up, so he could look at her properly.

“You ready?” He asked.

“Nope.”

Margo wasn’t very good at reunions, she’ll admit, but driving at full speed towards the avengers about to face off, only to be interrupted by some of Jordan’s men (not the same Jordan from the Housing Program but a completely different asshole), she really couldn’t give a shit about all of the familiar faces she was going to surprise.

They heard her and Dimitri on the bike, and when they all turned to look at them, wondering who found them, some of Jordan’s men went to grab Bucky. Margo moved from her sitting position, bracing a foot on Dimitri’s back and the other on the seat so that when he slammed the breaks, she went flying into the group just before they made contact with Bucky. They rolled and when she stood up again to punch one in the face as he was getting up, she saw Dimitri speed up again to run over two other guys on the other side of the group.

After punching another guy in the throat and kicking him so he went flying a few feet away, Margo took her helmet off, so she could breathe properly. Just as she did, she felt a punch coming from behind her and dodged, spinning around and bringing the helmet up as hard as she could with a grunt causing it to break against Yerik’s thick skull. She threw the scraps out of her hands and jumped up, roundhouse kicking him in the jaw.

“Land on your toes!” Both Natasha and Bucky yelled in unison, both surprised at each other, and _both_ avoiding gazes from their teams.

When Margo landed- _on her toes_ -she was grabbed from behind, allowing Yerik to punch her pretty damn hard in the stomach. Usually, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem for most people, just walk it off, right? With Margo, on the other hand, her body was still catching up with being alive again and was taking a bitch of a time to properly heal. So, whenever she got a particularly bad beating, her stomach would start bleeding. And the blood wouldn’t stay there.

Yerik punched her square across the faced and a horror movie amount of blood came spraying out of her mouth. Everyone stopped fighting, seeing her slumped over and whimpering in pain from a dislocated jaw was a new one for all involved.

“What,” Sam said, taking out one of his guns. “The fuck. Did you do to her?”

The man holding her suddenly dropped her, landing on her stomach and holding his hands up in defence.

“That’s not any better!” Wanda yelled out, recognising the fire and bared teeth from a failed attempt to get her and her bother away from Hydra. She remembered seeing this woman press her hand against the window of her cell with a pained expression while being pulled away by her friends.

“She’s tough!” Yerik yelled, suddenly very worried not only for Margo but also what his wife would do when she found out if he killed her. “Look!”

When he turned her over onto her back, Margo spat a mouthful of her blood directly into his eyes, making him jump back and fall over from surprise. When the other guy tried to get a hold of her, she kicked him in the balls, and when he bent over to grab them in pain, she took his head in between her calves and snapped his neck.

It was only as she struggles to stand up and relocate her jaw did Bucky notice the knee brace on her right leg. It was a bit bulky on her, with some wiring that would only allow her leg to move a certain way, and as she stood up, she didn’t even need to walk for him to notice a limp. She looked at him, blood around her mouth again and a scar that ran from her temple to her jaw on the left side of her face.

She also had gun holsters on each of her thighs, and when another man came rushing toward her, trying to punch her face, she dodged. Taking ahold of the arm, she moved her knee up and pushed it to break his arm with a deafening crack before taking her gun out and shooting him three times. Once in the ankle, once in the thigh, and once in the stomach. As he knelt, she kept a grip on his arm to keep him upright, and the dead look in her eyes didn’t let up either.

“One hundred and sixty-three.” Margo said, turning her body so she was talking to Yerik.

“What?” He had just wiped the blood from his eyes and was standing up.

“You wanted to know how many people I’ve killed to protect Barnes.” There was a dead silence now.

Yerik looked at her, horrified and terrified at the same time. She then raised her eyebrows in a challenge before putting the gun against the injured man’s chest.

“You two wanna help me round that number up?”

“Margo.” Dimitri let the man he knocked out go limp on the ground and he started walking towards her, ready to give her a speech about how Yerik was a friend.

“I don’t feel like dying again and that’s all Jordan wants to do. Kill me.” She put her gun down before rubbing her jaw where a bruise was already forming, letting the shot man fall to the ground. “So, if you could go back and tell him that this was unsuccessful then that’d be great. Because after that I can work on whatever the fuck _these guys_ are fighting about.”

She waved her gun to Tony’s team, allowing Yerik to scamper off with the other man and only just realising that Spider-Man was standing next to Natasha.

“Okay, why the FUCK does Stark have a fifteen-year-old on his team?” She looked to Tony with the greatest judgy look she could muster. “Actually, don’t tell me. It’ll make me wanna kill you.”

“Why are you fighting so hard to protect this man?” A heavily African accented voice asked, and Margo could only assume it came from the King of Wakanda.

“Because he vomited on me for a week straight and I’m not letting him get away with the stench my couch has from it.” Everyone was left confused at this statement.

“You could have given any reason,” Bucky said, and this was probably the loudest he’d spoken since seeing Steve again. “And you _had_ to bring up the vomiting!”

“ _A WEEK Sarge!_ You propelled your vomit on me for a week!” She turned around and pointed a finger at him. “My therapist said I have trauma with vomiting now so yeah! I’m gonna bring up the vomiting!”

“He set off a bomb that killed dozens, including my father!” T’Challa said, walking forward.

“No, he didn’t!” She sounded tired. “He was asleep in Romania when the bomb went off.”

“ _HOW_ the hell do you know _that_?!” Bucky was getting more worked up every time she opened her mouth.

“I’m your side, Sarge! Shut up!” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, holding it for a second (contemplated holding it until she passed out) and then released. “He was framed, to flush him out of hiding.”

“To what end?” Natasha asked, stepping forward as well.

“Fucked if I know.” Was Margo’s response with a shrug of her shoulders.

“The psychiatrist that saw Bucky used his trigger words to get information out of him about a place in Siberia.” Steve answered instead.

“Siberia? Like the place they kept you?” Margo asked Bucky. “As in the place where the other Winter Soldiers are?”

Bucky nodded solemnly.

“There-there’s more than one of him?” Peter croaked out, raising his hand timidly.

“Five.” She turned back to look at Peter was a serious look. “And they’re worse.”

“How so?” Tony asked.

“Are they Triple S?” Peter asked again, Triple S meaning “Super Soldier Serum” to the kids that grew up learning about it in school.

“Yes, and they’re worse because they trained for years in order to be picked for the serum. As far as Hydra was concerned, they were at peak physical, mental, and emotional health. You couldn’t get any other operatives to work as well as they did, and the serum just tipped them completely over the edge.” She was looking back and forth between the two groups of hero’s frantically. “They’re completely insane, but I fail to see why a psychiatrist would want any part of that.”

“I don’t think he was.” Sam piped up. “He was able to get away and blend into a crowd like a chameleon.”

“What was his name?” Dimitri asked, pulling out his phone and typing in the name Sam gave him. “Uh, Doctor Theo Broussard was found dead in his Berlin hotel room ten minutes ago.”

“You’re kidding me.” Margo said.

“The guy that picked him from the airport, however,” He looked up at her with a deadpan expression. “A friend of ours, Helmut Zemo, former commander of EKO Scorpion.”

Tony and Rhodey had been taking this time to look into this guy and sure enough, he led a Sokovian covert kill squad before leaving just after the mess with Ultron.

“And _that_ guy is looking for the other Winter Soldiers?” Margo shook her head, taking out her own phone and dialling Mala’s number. “This changes shit.”

Before she could bring it up to her ear though, Tony shot it out of her hand, making her freeze in her spot.

“No, we have a job to do. And it’s to bring Barnes in.” Dimitri watched Tony talk, noticing how the more he spoke the more he wasn’t quite believing his own words. “He was still seen as the bomber in Vienna and it’s our job to take him back to Berlin.”

“Oh what? So, he can be held indefinitely without trial, and without a lawyer?” Steve said. “Fantastic justice system there Tony.”

“It’s still the law, St-”

“Did you just shoot my fucking phone?” Margo interrupted, slowly turning her head to look at him with an angry expression. “In loving memory of our Aunt Peggy, I’ll go easy on you. But make no mistake, I am going to beat the shit out of you.”

“ _Our_ Aunt Peggy?” Tony looked at her confused. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Jasper and Cassandra’s kid.” Margo bared her teeth when she spoke.

There was a pause, where Tony just looked at her confused, shaking his head at the information.

“Jasper killed his daughter.” He said, not believing her. “He killed himself.”

Margo spread her arms wide, maliciously smirking at him.

“I survived, bitch.”

“Okay.” He then brought his hand up and shot a small low voltage electric disk into her chest, it wouldn’t do anything more than knock her out and make a loud bang.

“Hey!” There was a gust of wind when Dimitri yelled out, forcing everyone to slide back a little on the concrete.

Margo, on the other hand, it looked as if the electrical currents from the disk were being absorbed by her. And when she looked up at him, the currents turned purple, some travelling into her big curly hair that was up in a high ponytail, but they also wrapped around her eyes, striking a stab of fear through Tony.

“That’s new.” Bucky mumbled.

“Forget her beating the shit out of you!” Dimitri seethed in anger. “I’m going to suffocate you in your own damn suit, fucker!”

“You wanna arrest the Sarge? Fine.” Margo saw Natasha’s eyebrows raise slightly, not in a disapproving way but in a way that said she didn’t really know what she was going to do next.

“Well shit.” Bucky mumbled, preparing himself again for a fight, making everyone else on his team tense as well.

“But I get first dibs of the talking, flying microwave.”

Margo will admit later that, perhaps, shooting Vision with a bolt of lightning wasn’t very nice.

She would not admit, however, that shooting Tony Stark with a bolt of lightning wasn’t nice because it sure as hell felt very nice. Plus, it wasn’t like he was hurt from that in particular. No. He was hurt when she used her whole body to slam him into a truck, but he did also give her a giant burn on her right arm, so she deemed them even for now.

Around the time that Steve and Bucky were getting to the quinjet, Clint had pulled Margo and Dimitri aside and offered to cover them while they escaped. It took some convincing for Margo, but only because she wanted to stay and make sure Bucky got away without any hiccups but both Clint and Dimitri ended up winning. It took a few hours, but after everything with her contract to Mala was sorted (meaning after Mala yelled at Jordan so much that he was forced to leave the room, or he’d cry), Margo was able to get her team to help with getting to Siberia.

They had to get her out of there nearly immediately however due to finding nothing but Bucky’s metal arm. And from the looks, it didn’t come off nicely.

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Posting the second chapter 5 years after writing the first one?? Unheard of! 
> 
> I can't even count the number of times I've re-written, re-plotted, re-worked and re-published this damn fic but I love it waaay too much to just discontinue it. 
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments!


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